DISCOVERY BY ALEXANDER MACKENZIE

river. Heno sooner saw us than he gave the whoop to alarm his friends, who immediately appeared on the bank, armed with bows and arrows and spears. They were thinly habited, and displayed the most outrageous antics. Though they were certainly in a state of great apprehen- sion, they manifested by their gestures that they were resolved to attack us if we should venture to land. I there- fore ordered the men to stop the way of the canoe, and even to check her drifting with the current, as it would have been extreme folly to have approached these savages before their fury had in some degree subsided. My in- terpreters, who understood their language, informed me that they threatened us with instant death if we drew nigh the shore, and then followed their menace by discharging a volley of arrows, some of which fell short of the canoe and others passed over it, so that they fortunately did us no injury. As we had been carried by the current below the spot where the Indians were, I ordered my people to paddle to the opposite side of the river, without the least appearance of confusion, so that they brought me abreast of them. My interpreters, while we were within hearing, had done everything in their power to pacify them, but in vain. We also observed that they had sent off a canoe with two men down the river, as we concluded, to com- municate their alarm and procure assistance. . . .”

This circumstance induced him to leave no step untried in order to establish friendly intercourse with them before the arrival of the expected reinforcements. So he goes on to say:

“T left the canoe and walked by myself along the beach, in order to induce some of the natives to come to me, which I imagined they might be disposed to do when they saw me alone without any apparent possibility of receiving assistance, irom ymy people. .. 79 -At the same tine, in

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